We've Moved to South Fork, Colorado

We took it easy on our last day in La Veta.  In fact, we never left town.  We visited with Mark's cousin, Sherry, who has lived in La Veta most of her life.  Then we went to the local farmer's market.  We heard monumental things about "The Pie Lady" that makes a weekly appearance at the La Veta market with her award winning pies.  We bought a pork and chile pie for supper, and an apple and berry pie for dessert.  We should have taken pictures, but they were consumed too fast.  But we would be one of her best customers if we were staying in La Veta longer.

But we were on the road on July 3rd, heading down highway 160 towards South Fork.  We arrived in town just as their Independence Day parade was finishing up.  In fact, our motor home was almost in the parade as we made our way to Aspen Ridge RV campground.  This campground had a float pulled by four stately Clydesdales.  They were "undressed" from their float finery, but were still hanging around the campground after we got set up.

Because Creede, Colorado has a huge Fourth of July celebration, South Fork (which is only 20 miles away) has chosen to have all their Independence Day activities on the third of July.  So we arrived just in time to take in their activities.  We went to the visitor's center, which made us "bearly" feel welcome.


We also took in the farmer's market and the Kiwanis brisket dinner.  We were a little disappointed that the Rio Grande River that snakes through town was too high for the annual Independence Day duck race.  


But our favorite activity was the street dance.  We danced every time they played a two-step.  When they played other songs, we roamed the area taking pictures.  Here is Mark blending in with the locals.








Denisa thought this was the "Blogger Days Celebration" so she was all in for a picture.  But it is actually advertising the "Logger Days Celebration" that will happen on the weekend of July 18.  It sounds like fun, and something we would like to attend.

It was a cool afternoon, and we got some rain.  We were wearing jackets most of the day, and it was a nice evening for fireworks.  Our camera doesn't do justice to low light photography, but you just can't celebrate the 3rd of July without some pyrotechnics!

The Hike to the West Peak "Almost" Summit

We waited for the coolest weather day for our longest hike--up to the peak of the tallest mountain in the area.  The West Peak is the one on the right in the Twin Peak picture below.  In order to get both mountains in a single picture, we had to be many miles away, so it's hard to get a good grasp of their size.

But at 13,626 feet high and 2.75 miles wide, West Peak is a majestic mountain.  In the lower left hand side of this picture there is one of the natural rock wall dikes that radiate out from the mountain.  It looks a little like a piece of the Great Wall of China, marching across the foothills.  There are over 200 of those dikes in this area, some of them as long as 14 miles.

To get to the trailhead, we drove to the top of Cuchara Pass and headed up and east on a gravel road called Cordova Pass.  This is a rough six miles, with some interesting "wildlife" on the road.

We started the hike around 8:30, and found ourselves in an open meadow.  It was 55 degrees when we started, so we were encouraged to hike fast to keep warm.  That's not a bad problem to have on a hike in July.

We hiked up to a high ridge, but there were still plenty of miles between us and the summit.  The nice thing about this hike is that the trailhead is over 11,000 feet in elevation.  So it was relatively flat during the first two miles.

We hiked over and around some of those 200 rock walls coming off the mountain.

We were usually hiking towards the summit, but the views to the Spanish Peaks in the other direction weren't bad either.

As we got higher, it looked like the trail was leading right off into the clouds because we were higher than everything around us.

Around 2.5 miles into the hike we got to a giant rock cairn, and the official end of the trail.

Now the only thing between us and the summit was a couple miles of loose and steep rock slides.

So we headed right and across the face of the mountain, using our best hiking skills to step 12 inches up and then slide 10 inches back down.  It's a good thing it was a 60 degree day, because this is the kind of hiking that makes you sweat.

And it was a long ways to the top!

It was at this point that we saw two people coming down from the summit--far to our left.  We had totally missed where we were supposed to be climbing up, and had wasted lots of energy going the wrong way.  We got back on track, now with worn out legs and lungs that were hurting from the high altitude.  We really hate to not finish a hike, but Denisa finally decided she better save some energy for the perilous hike back down from this steep loose rock.  We had never split on a trail, but Denisa stayed put while Mark continued to the summit alone.  To keep herself occupied during the wait for his return, Denisa played with her camera.  She took pictures of the mountain side and the occasional flower.

She took pictures of the tiny flowering plants that were smaller than her index finger.

She started down slowly, taking pictures of the more colorful lower slopes and the beautiful sky.

All this time Mark is toiling upwards, using those strong muscles to get to the summit.  He took a few panorama pictures of his view from the top ridge.  The clouds are really coming in now, and he is worried that he should get back down before the afternoon storms hit.

He hiked another 15 minutes up, and took this final picture just short of the summit. He's looking down on all the lower peaks in the area.

Denisa caught one picture of him on the ridge coming down.  He's that gray speck on the top of that big gray mountain of rock.  Next time Mark needs to remember to wear a bright red shirt so he'll be easier to spot at the top.  Unlike Denisa's leisurely stroll down, Mark was making record time on his descent.

Reunited at the tree line, now it was a fast 2.5 hike through the forest to get to the trailhead.  As we passed through the open meadow, the sky looked angry and we saw lightning on the mountains in front of us.

 But once again we made it back to the car before it rained.  A little sad that we had missed the summit, we will just have to come back to the Twin Peaks another time to conquer West Peak together.

The Scenic Highway of Legends

As we were driving north on I-25 a week ago, we started seeing the signs for an exit off to Highway 12 and something called "The Scenic Highway of Legends."  When we ended up camping at La Veta, we discovered that we were now living on that highway.  So we took a day to explore all of the scenic things around us.

A few miles south of La Veta we came to Profile Rock.  To an untrained eye, it looked like a rock wall.

We came to learn that these long rock walls that show up randomly are actually called great dikes.  They radiate outward from the mountains like spokes on a wheel.  There is a geological explanation for them that is too long and technical for this blog, but they make for very interesting landscape in the area.  This particular rock wall is called portrait rock because you can see portraits of famous Americans if you know where to look and from what angle.  Now that we have a trained eye, we spotted George Washington (or anyone else with a prominent nose).

Next stop along the scenic Highway of Legends is the "Devil's Staircase."  We have a legends booklet that explains that the devil was allowed out of his fiery home to survey the world, and this is where he climbed up the steps to look around.  But God saw the beauty of this area and took it as his own instead--banishing the devil forever.  So I guess that means this is another of God's wonders.

It was such a pretty staircase that we took another picture on a cloudy day from the other direction.

We also stopped at the town of Cuchara, but if you blink you will miss the one block of downtown off to the east of the highway.  We marveled at the beautiful pots of flowers in front of all the souvenir shops and eating establishments.  We also noted all the houses that lined the highway, but came to find out they were all summer rentals.  There are only 70 people that live in the town of Cuchara year round.

Our next stop was Cuchara River Recreation Area.  After four miles of steep gravel road, we arrived at Blue Lake.  At 10,000 feet in elevation, this is a cool place that attracts lots of fishermen even in the middle of the week. 

There is a hike that takes you to several smaller lakes, as well as our favorite lake in the area--Bear Lake.

 We were really looking for a nice mountain lake to put the kayak in.  But Blue Lake was too shallow, and we thought that the fishermen lining the banks of Bear Lake might not appreciate our rowing around their lines.  The two guys fly fishing in tubes in the middle of the lake were either eskimos, or had insulated flippers, because the water was just a few degrees above freezing.  Denisa sat beside the waterfall that was feeding water into the lake, and at 10,500 in elevation it could literally take your breath away.

There were also hiking trails that started at the campground at Bear Lake.  Even though we are seeing large areas of evergreen forests that are turning brown, the forest around Bear Lake is green and healthy.

The tops of the mountains are still white, and the snow melt makes this beautiful waterfall cascading down the mountain ice cold.  We had to marvel that a landscape engineer couldn't have planned a prettier fall.














The Scenic Highway of Legends then took us over Cuchara Pass, beside North Lake, and over Monument Lake.  We must not have been in the mood to kayak because we never put the boat in today after driving by all that water.  Our final destination of the day is a town by the name of Stonewall.  Built in the shadow of another one of those stone dikes that radiate from the mountains, it was hard to take a picture.  It would have been a great place for a public park that could show off that stone wall, but that land had "no trespassing" signs instead.  The best thing we can say about Stonewall is that the only restaurant in town has really good homemade pie.

We drove by a succession of little towns with names like Vigil and Weston, and saw the long conveyer belt that crosses over the highway at the New Elk Mine.  The entire loop is 80 miles, and we had already seen the portion along the interstate, so we headed home.  We stopped back through Cuchara on the way back, as there was a pizza calling our name at the Dog Bar and Grill.  You know, since we have retired we have found that we can't survive on pie alone.

Some Pros and Cons about Full-time RVing

Now that we have been living this nomadic life for close to six months, it seemed like a good time to write about some of the positives and negatives.  In fact, we have found many things have both positives and negatives.

For example, we miss our home church and Pine Acres Church friends back in Weatherford, Oklahoma. It was nice to know where we were going to church every Sunday.  Now Mark must spend some time every week looking at area churches to find a place to worship on Sunday morning.  The positive is that we have gone to some great churches and have met some great Christians in our travels.  This week we knew we would go to Hope Lutheran in Westcliffe.  We have been here before because Mark's brother and his family worshiped here for many years.  It is a classic old church with a mountain backdrop, and they were glad to have an Engelman family there on a Sunday morning again.

Another negative to full-time RVing is being away from our friends and family back home.  But on the positive side, we have really enjoyed getting to see friends and family that live in other states.  This week we made the drive to Penrose, Colorado to meet our good friends Dan and Debbie.  When our boys were young, we traded off baby-sitting so we could still have date nights.  But they moved to Colorado, and we haven't seen them in a while.  Now that all our boys are grown, it was fun to catch up and have brunch at the Coyote's Coffee Den.

Another thing that takes up a lot of our time is deciding where we are going to live.  When you live in a house, you take it for granted that you will be living in the same town next week.  But with a house on wheels, the negative is you have to spend the time to find a new town and new camping site on a regular basis.  The positive is that you get to find a new town and camping site on a regular basis. We are thriving on being in a new location and exploring new places!  After a week in the country with no electricity, our batteries said it was time to find a new camping site. Denisa just had to take another picture of her home rolling through the pasture, this time towards the Wet Mountains that flank our valley on the East.

On our last morning we were treated to an eagle sitting atop an electrical pole, scouring the area for his next meal.  That brings us to another positive and negative of full-time RVing.  Finding your next meal takes more time because every grocery store is different.  We are now members of several different food store clubs in order to get their "members only" specials. We spend most of our time shopping at very small grocery stores in even smaller towns.  The positive is that we get to find and sample local cuisine that we never get tired of trying.

So we are learning to live with the negatives and enjoying the positives this last six months.  For now, we have landed in La Veta, Colorado, at the "Circle the Wagons" campground for the next several days.  Denisa read a travel brochure about the Twin Peaks area of southern Colorado, and suddenly that became our destination.  For those that think that Twin Peaks is just the name of a restaurant chain, we have photographic evidence that it is an actual place.

 
This area is also known as Spanish Peaks or Wahatoya (which for some reason means "Breasts of the World").  The negative is that we knew nothing about this area when we arrived.  The positive is that we get to learn first-hand about another part of God's wonder.

Creatures Great and Small

Just as Denisa likes taking pictures of flowers and children, she also thrives on chasing animals through the forest to snap their photo.  Some days she is patient enough to get a clear picture, but more often we get blurry pictures or bare branches where the bird used to be perched.  We have deleted the 4,612 bad pictures to get to the 8 best ones.  Most of them are small creatures, but there's a special "great creature" story at the end of the blog if you make it that far.

We've seen a lot of hummingbirds in the mountains, and heard even more.  We didn't set up a bird feeder, because it was more fun watching them feed from the wildflowers.  When we took our bike ride, we noticed a hummingbird chasing Mark's bike.  Then we realized he was attracted to the bright red drink in his bottle holder.  We have also noticed that close-ups of hummingbirds usually make them look like angry little birds.

We see pronghorn in the fields around us almost every day.  This was fun because for once, Denisa caught one moving.  Fun fact:  the pronghorn is the fastest land animal on this continent.

We have seen so many chipmunks around our camping spot, but on one hike we had a ground squirrel pose for a picture.  We have learned that though very similar in appearance, the ground squirrel does not have a stripe on its face like the chipmunk.

Birds in trees are the hardest to photograph because our simple little point-and-shoot camera likes to focus on the leaves or the branch, leaving us with a blurry bird.  But occasionally, we get a clear bird so Denisa wanted to put it in the blog.

Besides chasing birds, Denisa likes chasing butterflies.  Instead of using a butterfly net, she chases them with a camera.  Sometimes she evens catches one.

In all of our hikes, we have only seen one herd of mountain sheep.  We used one of the pictures in the blog yesterday, but they were so dang cute we needed to have another one today.

We usually call this animal a marmot.  But when we were in Israel they called it a hyrax.  We hiked a mile with a woman yesterday that commented on the "whistle pigs" she saw at high elevations.  We knew exactly what she was talking about because these guys have a high pitched call that sounds just like a referee calling a ball game.

From our camp site for the last seven days, we can see our nearest neighbor's house in the valley.  The Frahm's live here year round, and have a herd of cattle in the pastures that surround us.  

Sherman Frahm showed us pictures of a baby coyote that his dog Gus scared up that morning.  He was kind enough to text us a picture of the little coyote.

But the "great creature" story also comes from the Frahms.  Several years ago on the 4th of July, they returned from the fireworks to find that a bear had been inside their home, helping himself to holiday cookies, brownies, and bread.  In fact, he ripped out half of this window to let himself in.

The bear was outside enjoying the snacks that he took from the kitchen when the family returned from the fireworks.  When the bear came back at 2 a.m., Sherman was ready for him.  The bear is now a rug hanging on the wall in their bedroom.

Sherman had told us that he saw a bear in the meadow while we were staying there.  Mark is sad that he didn't see the bear for himself, but Denisa is glad that no pictures of a live bear are part of this blog.